Bill's Media Releases

ADDRESSING THE CHILD CARE SQUEEZE

A Shorten Labor Government will act to address the issue of child care waiting lists and help parents return to work faster.

The struggle to secure a child care place has been completely ignored by the Liberals.

Many parents face long and frustrating waiting lists to access early education and care services – with the current arrangements limiting work options for parents.

This isn’t only a battle before children reach school. Parents wanting Outside School Hours Care can face long waiting lists, and may even find that services simply don’t exist in their area.

Long waiting lists also drive up early education and care costs – locking low and middle income families out of high demand areas.

To help tackle waiting lists, Labor will:

Invest $100 million over three years from 2017-18 so services in areas of very high demand can expand – creating more places where families need them. We will target areas of high or rapidly growing demand, with waiting lists in the local area, and priority will be given to community and not-for-profit services which would otherwise not be able to expand.

Commit $63.2 million over three years from 2017-18 to establish or expand up to 1,200 Outside School Hours Care services. Grants of up to $50,000 will be made available. Services must be in areas of high demand, have waiting lists or be in areas where Outside School Hours Care is currently not available.

Labor is not spending more money than the Government on child care – we are better allocating it over the forward estimates so parents have fairer child care relief, sooner.

Families who rely on child care need a better deal now - and that's what Labor will deliver.

The Liberals have done nothing for 1,000 days in Government other than make child care more unaffordable for families - and they have no plans to do anything until 2018 at the earliest.

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That’s great, but women are still forced to go back to work after 18 weeks on min wage. It isn’t good enough! We don’t have enough time to bond with our babies and you just have to look at the research to see that any less than six months at home will cause development problems for our precious children. Gone are the days where the average family can survive on one wage for any significant period of time until you are a high income earner. We need a min of six months paid parental leave now, do something about it! Listen to your mothers!